Some think it might. In the United States, federal and state governments can claim land using eminent domain, but we rarely see communities take control to provide affordable housing, let alone empower local residents to make it happen themselves. “It is impressive,” said John Lovett, a law professor at Louisiana State University, who studies Scotland’s land reform laws. Scotland is “trying to achieve something that we just don’t even think about in the U.S. It’s creating a way for the government to enable or facilitate the disassembly or the decentralization of landownership. We’ve never tried that in the U.S.”
If funds were provided to communities to make purchases, as they are in Scotland, perhaps small American communities could develop affordable housing or communally run stores. Urban communities could buy abandoned or derelict property and repurpose it, preventing speculators from sitting on it waiting for values to rise.
Critics might argue that experiments such as Ulva’s are too small and too remote to be replicated in the United States. But in an age where we’ve grown used to tackling issues with sweeping infrastructure bills and large-scale projects, there’s something refreshing — and also quintessentially American — about small-scale, community-led development.
These tiny Scottish democracies are not so different from the self-governing communities established by the people who created the blueprint for much of American settlement, blending private property with communal spaces like schools, libraries, churches and parks. Recreating these experiments in the United States could give something back to Americans that we’ve lost. They might help us reimagine growth: how to build slowly, grow sustainably, reestablish local democracy and deepen our relationship with the land. And in our atomized, secularized and screen-addled age, they could help address our modern-day yearnings for connectivity, spirituality and nature.
I couldn’t find any memorials for the villagers who were once forced off Ulva, but there is one for William Francis Clark — a marble gravestone on a hilltop. When I climbed that hill in 2018, I looked over the island and saw nothing but remnants of a vanished civilization. But on this visit I could see Highland cattle grazing and cozy-looking homes. I heard a farmer’s A.T.V. rumbling across the land to help a tenant with her water problem.
A “wee bit better,” indeed. There is hope in small but meaningful improvements — not just for Ulva, but for communities everywhere.
Ken Ilgunas is the author of “Walden on Wheels” and “Trespassing Across America.” He lives in Scotland.
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